


you know how to make a boy feel warm

by isabelaofrivaini



Category: Sally Face (Video Games)
Genre: Demons, Ghosts, M/M, Mutual Pining, Original Villain Character - Freeform, Slow Burn, Swearing, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 06:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11640957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isabelaofrivaini/pseuds/isabelaofrivaini
Summary: How do you get rid of a spirit that you accidentally summoned while trying to figure out your feelings for your best friend? Sal has no clue.





	1. boys will be boys

**Author's Note:**

> hi hi! remember the slow-burn chapter fic i promised y'all during livewire? it's HERE. i hope you'll like it. chapters will be pretty short at 2-3k, tbh. maybe they'll get longer as i get more ideas but as for now, enjoy!
> 
> tumblr: larryjohns0n
> 
> only rated T for swearing, and maybe some violence in later chapters? (as in, there's one scene that i may or may not put in due to how ... frickin creepy it is lol)

WOMAN LOSES ALL FOUR KIDS IN ACCIDENT - February 15th, 1976

Wynona Barwegen, age 34, was driving through Penn Avenue with all of her children when, due to an undisclosed distraction, had a head-on-head collision with another car. There were five fatalities. Barwegen’s four children, Lisa, age nine, Evelyn, age 7, Lucas, age 5, and Danny, age 2 were all killed upon impact. Barwegen got away with non-fatal injuries but later was found …

 

-

 

“Hey, at least she didn’t say it was because you smell like cheese,” Larry says. They’re sitting in his bedroom, listening to Sanity’s Fall and just .. chilling. It’s pretty cool, having the type of friend who you don’t really need to interact with at all to have a good time.

 

“That’s true,” Sal says. “In fact, the whole ‘sorry I’m rejecting you because I have a girlfriend’ is probably the least awful way to be rejected.” He’d fumblingly confessed to Ashley that he had a crush on her the previous day, but she’d just started dating a girl from sixth period with bubblegum hair and underage tattoos.

 

“If it’s any consolation, the girl she hangs out with now is pretty rad,” Larry says. “She and I harassed a substitute teacher into quitting once. It was great.”

 

 _Ugh._ It’s not any consolation at all, but Sal doesn’t want to tell Larry that. Is this girl cooler than _he_ is? It’s probably not that hard to be cooler than him, to be honest. “It’s chill,” Sal says. “At least I told her before I, like, fell too deep, y’know what I mean?”

 

“Yeah, dude,” Larry says. “But, hey, that still kinda blows. Wanna get some Chinese food?”

 

“Dude, the last time we got Chinese, I threw up chow mein.”

 

“And?”

 

“It’s _two_ in the morning, my dad would fight me.” He is hungry, though.

 

“And?”

 

“… Okay, fine, we’ll get Chinese, Lar.”

 

Larry does one of those overdramatic slow-motion fist-pumps that Sal has only ever found amusing when Larry’s the one who does them. Sal grabs his wallet and they go up the stairs towards the other end of Larry’s bedroom, figuring that if they leave through that exit they’ll be less likely to be caught by a sleepy Lisa Johnson.

 

“Don’t forget a sweatshirt, bro,” Larry says, tossing Sally one from his closet. It’s too big for Sally, since Larry’s a whole six inches taller than him, but it’s warm and it smells like Larry. Sal’s not the best at identifying specific smells, to be honest, but, well, is anybody? Besides characters in fiction stories, of course.

 

Larry takes a look at him and snorts. “It’s like a sweater dress on you.” It _does_ go down to his knees.

 

“I like sweater dresses,” Sal says, a little stubborn. “They’re cozy.”

 

“Right, dude,” Larry answers, and opens the door.

 

The snow is on its way towards melting, but there are still some ugly splotches of it lying around. The rest of the grass is wet and slushy, and Sal figures that he’ll have to remind himself to take his sneakers off when they go back inside to avoid that annoying, _annoying_ squeaking.

 

“Where even _is_ the Chinese food place, man?” Sal asks. “Usually when we go it’s, like, light outside. Is it even open?”

 

“Uhh… Shit, I didn’t think that far,” Larry says. “Whatever. If they’re not cool enough to be 24/7 we can get McDonald’s hot fudge sundaes.”

 

 _Awesome._ “We could always just get both,” Sal says, dreaming of Oreo McFlurries and hot fudge sundaes with chopped peanuts.

 

“Sounds good, dude,” Larry says. “Hey, you’re not gonna be the asshole who spends my money on, like, _tofu,_ right?”

 

“First of all, you’re a hater,” Sal says. “Second of all, I brought my own money. Third of all, it’s like, 3am. I’m going to eat beef dumplings and then fall asleep in the restaurant.”

 

Larry shouts _beef_ into the street. There’s no one around to make fun of him, except for Sal, who is too amused to do anything but wheeze into his sweater dress. “I got real excited about that beef, man,” Larry says. He seems pleased with the fact that he got Sal to laugh.

 

Sal, for some reason, keeps having to pull his eyes away from Larry. Larry who looks so chill walking down the streets, even though it’s three in the morning and Sal jumps at every little noise. He’s never really been able to be in the dark since the accident, but at least he’s not alone.

 

The Chinese restaurant, as expected, is not open. Larry presses his forehead into the glass door and sighs for drama-related purposes. Sal half-expects him to start reciting a eulogy to the orange chicken that he never got to eat.

 

Luckily, their plan B is open, in all of its fast-food glory. The workers behind the counter look a little dead inside, but Sal suspects that all McDonald’s workers look that way. They must get a lot of weird people.

 

Sal wonders if he and Larry count as weird. Probably.

 

The only other customer is what he guesses is a college student, who’s typing furiously on their laptop with three empty iced coffee cups around them. Sal really, really relates. While trying to figure out what they want, they linger a few feet away from the counter. The cashier looks like she might start a brawl.

 

“You just want ice cream, dude?” Larry asks, reaching into his back pocket for his money. “I’m the best friend ever, so I can pay if you want.”

 

“I don’t want your butt money, man,” Sal teases, bumping into Larry’s shoulder with his own. “Also, you paid last time. I owe you.” He grabs his own wallet, pulling out a ten.

 

Larry narrows his eyes. Sal recognizes that face. It’s the _competitive nice person_ face. Oh God. “Alright,” Larry says. “I’m thinking a sundae, what about you?”

 

“Oh, yes,” Sal agrees, if not a little hesitantly. “I love their hot fu-“

 

Larry has bolted to the counter and slammed his money onto the counter. “Can I get two sundaes, please?” he asks. “I’m paying for both of them.”

 

Sal lets out a pterodactyl shriek (sorry, poor college student trying to work) and barrels into him. “No, wait,” he says, but the cashier just makes eye contact with him as she rings Larry up.

 

“You’re too _nice,_ ” Sal says, and his heart is beating so fast. Why is his heart beating so fast?

 

“It’s in my genes,” Larry says, patting his jeans for emphasis. What a loser.

 

They eat their sundaes while walking home, since Sal’s a little embarrassed from the scene they made inside. Every noise makes him bump a little closer to Larry, since the only light source they have is from the street lamps. Larry doesn’t mind, and if he does, he doesn’t say anything. What a good guy.

 

They hear the man before they see him. A deep voice, a little panicky, saying something in a language Sal doesn’t recognize. It’s coming from the park through the trees, which Sal only really knows is coming up because the street lights had illuminated the park sign. The only other language besides English that Sal knows is what his high school Spanish class has taught him, so all he knows is that this isn’t that.

 

“Is that Latin?” Larry murmurs, not quite a whisper but quiet enough so that only Sal can hear him.

 

“I don’t know, man,” Sal says, gripping his sundae a little extra tight. “That would be so frickin’ creepy. I feel like I’m in a horror movie.”

 

“I’ll protect you,” Larry says, and it’s voiced like a joke, but Sal feels what’s left of his cheeks turn red all the same. Not that he needs protecting all that much. He’s been through a lot. He can handle himself.

 

When they pass the park, they see the light of small flame - a lighter, maybe a candle? - and a face next to it. Sal knows that common sense would probably indicate to run straight back to the apartment building, but he’s curious. There _is_ a lot of scary shit going on at Addison, so who says this isn’t related? Who says this isn’t _causing_ it?

 

“Dude, why did you _stop_?” Larry hisses. “He’ll _see_ you.”

 

And, as if on cue, a pair of wide, dark eyes go straight to Sal’s working eye. “Oh, sh-“ he starts to say, because the fire goes out.

 

“Dude, run!” Larry says, and drags Sal a few feet. Sal digs his heels into the concrete.

 

“But what if this has to do with _you-know-what_?” Sal asks. The demon. The ghosts.

 

“Some random guy whispering Latin at three in the morning? You think _that_ has to do with ghosts?”

 

“Did you say ghosts?” a voice asks, and, preceded by the sound of a lighter turning on, a flame ignites right next to Sal’s face. He jumps back, shoulder pressing into Larry’s chest. His sundae cup, nearly empty, falls to the ground. Aw. “Also, it was Russian, man, don’t be offensive.”

 

Seeing the guy up close is different. He’s younger than Sal had expected, maybe thirty, maybe a bit older. His eyes are big and round, hair unshaven, and skin pale.

 

Larry places a hand on the upper of Sal’s back. “We were just leaving, dude,” he says.

 

“No, wait!” the guy says. “I don’t mean no trouble. I just need some help with somethin’.”

 

“You got drugs?” Sal says in an attempt to lighten the mood. He doesn’t actually _want_ any, but he likes to see Larry groan at him. For someone who gives off some serious stoner vibes, Larry is probably the most anti-drug person Sal has ever met. Sally doesn’t really have a preference, to be honest - he hasn’t tried anything, but wouldn’t rule it out.

 

“I hate you,” Larry mutters. _No you don’t,_ Sal thinks, fond.

 

“I’m not _that_ kind of guy,” the stranger says, and tilts back his head and laughs. It’s one of the eeriest things that Sal has seen, and he sees dead people. “I’m trying to perform a ritual. I need more people.”

 

 _A ritual._ Sal’s interest is sparked, though he doesn’t know why anyone would be so casual about admitting such a thing. “Interesting how you need people just when two more walk by,” Sal says.

 

“What can I say?” the guy asks. “It was convenient. You gonna help me or no?”

 

“No,” Larry says.

 

“What do you know about Addison Apartments?” Sal asks. “We help you, you help us.”

 

The stranger scratches his chin. “Okay. I know a lot about the spirits there. But you gotta help me first.”

 

“We could _end this shit,_ ” Sal says. “Larry, please, for me?”

 

“ _No!_ This is a bad idea, man. And I’m saying that as the guy who once drank three gallons of Mountain Dew in an hour.”

 

“Look,” Sal says, quiet so that only Larry can hear, “if he gets weird, we sprint. He only has a lighter, unless he has night vision he won’t be able to chase us.”

 

“I hate you,” Larry says again, but Sal can tell that he’s gonna cave in. “Where to, creepy nameless stranger?”

 

They end up back in the woods, and upon being able to see from the lighter, Sal sees books on the ground, along with a circle that must have been drawn with a stick. What.

 

“Stand over there,” the guy says, eagerly. “We should all be evenly apart, like a triangle.”

 

“If you need us, what were you muttering earlier?” Sal asks.

 

“I was trying to summon two wraiths to help me,” is the answer. “It didn’t work.”

 

Sal … doesn’t even want to know, honestly. “What is the ritual for?” he asks instead. He wants to see if there are any slip-ups. He reads a lot of detective books, okay?

 

The guy, however, doesn’t seem to mind the questioning. “A spirit,” he says, as if it’s obvious. “A good one, a protective one. I want her to come watch over those who need it.”

 

“Will a circle drawn into dirt really summon _anyone_?”

 

“The book I read said that directions did not need to be held exactly,” the guy says. “Passion makes up for anything else!”

 

Sal tries to give Larry a _see, he’s harmless!_ look, but it’s too dark for them to really see each other. (Plus there’s the fact that Larry probably wouldn’t have been able to tell what was being conveyed anyway.)

 

“So there’s no blood magic shit, right?” Sal asks.

 

“That doesn’t exist,” Larry says. “Please tell me that doesn’t exist.”

 

“I don’t think it exists,” Sal reassures him.

 

“Alright, the next part of the ritual calls for _silence,_ ” the guy says, but Sal thinks that he only said that because they were annoying him. Hah.

 

He starts saying something, but Sal doesn’t know any of it. He’s not as panicked as he sounded before they even saw him, which is good. Maybe? Sal’s not really sure.

 

All he knows is that the payoff for this better be good.

 

“Please,” the stranger says to the air, seemingly switching to English for now. “Wynona.”

 

_Wynona?_

 

 _“_ Er, buddy, Winona Ryder was really great in _The Age of Innocence_ but I don’t think that-“

 

“Shush.”

 

 _Okay, I’m shushing,_ Sal thinks, but nothing’s happening. He’s half-expecting the air to get all heavy, or something to appear in front of him, but nothing does. It’s just him, Larry, and this really creepy guy all just … standing in a circle.

 

“She has not decided to grace us with her presence,” the stranger says, lips pursed. “You may leave.”

 

“Great, thanks,” Larry says, and walks towards Sal. “Let’s go, dude.”

 

“Woah, woah,” Sal refutes, shaking his head. “Nah, dude, you promised us answers. About Addison?”

 

“Oh, yes,” the man says. “Err… sorry!”

 

And, with a crinkle of branches, he’s gone.

 

“Well, that was weird,” Larry says, close enough to Sal that they can see each other even in the dark. “Were we really expecting that to work?”

 

“No,” Sal says. “I don’t know. I just thought that maybe he’d say _something_ about the ghosts at Addison. Like why there are so many of them.”

 

“At least he didn’t seem that violent,” Larry says. “For strangers to meet at three in the morning, he was pretty harmless. But it’s getting to be more morning than night, dude, we should head home.”

 

Annoyed at whatever the hell just happened, but exhausted all the same, Sal agrees.

 

-

 

The walk home is quiet. He’s still a little jumpy from the, jeez, the _ritual_ they’d just taken place in. It had seemed harmless, but Sal isn’t sure that anything is as innocuous as it seems anymore.

 

Larry fiddles with the outside door to his room for a bit longer than usual. “It’s dark out, man,” he says, and when he finally gets it open, he nearly trips down the stairs.

 

“Wow,” Sal says, slow-clapping. “That’s talent right there.”

 

“Shut up,” Larry says, but there’s no heat behind it, because Sal doesn’t think that Larry is capable of feeling angry, not at him. “Do you want the bed?”

 

“Nah, that’s okay,” Sal says. “‘Night, Larry.”

 

“‘Night, Sally Face.”

 

-

 

They wake up at eleven in the morning to Lisa pounding on the door. “Boys, are you going to sleep in all day?”

 

“Yes,” a tired Larry calls back from beneath his mound of blankets.

 

“Why are you so tired?” Lisa asks. “What were you doing last night?”

 

 _Making bad decisions,_ Sal thinks. “Movie marathon,” he lies, nuzzling his head back into the pillow. So comfy. So tired.

 

Another pillow hits him in the head. The culprit, Larry, is looking at him with a dazed yet satisfied look that is doing weird things to Sal’s insides. Why does he feel so weird? Why is-

 

Oh.

 

Oh, _no._

 

_You do not have a crush on your best friend, Sal Fisher. You do not._

 

He does.

 

Shit.

 

“If you get up in the next five minutes, I’ll make you pancakes,” Lisa says through the door, oblivious to Sal’s moral dilemma. “But I need to run downtown to grab a few things soon.”

 

Pancakes. Pancakes. _Pancakes._

 

“I want pancakes,” Sal whispers to Larry.

 

“We’re up, Mom!” Larry calls, and rolls out of bed right onto the floor. He lands with a _thunk_ and Sal cannot _believe_ half of the things that this loser does.

 

“Why didn’t you just _stand up_?” he asks.

 

“I’m too cool,” Larry says from the floor.

 

“Man, I don’t even wanna know what’s been on your floor,” Sal says, standing up from his spot on Larry’s beanbag. “Have fun sleeping on the graves of all your spilled midnight snacks, I guess.”

 

Lisa, on the other side of the door, laughs at her son’s expense. Sal is pleased.

 

(They’re pretty good pancakes.)


	2. fake happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Don’t think about it,_ Sal thinks, and, with his ears tinted red, _don’t think about him, either._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings for this chap: profanity and a sexuality crisis lol
> 
> tumblr: larryjohns0n
> 
> also i just want you to know that. when i said "slow burn" i meant that it was going to take a long time for them to get together, not that it would take a long time for sal to like larry, lol. i don't know if that was ConfusingTM but there we go i cleared it up. tada im great.

Sal can’t focus in class. His English teacher is talking about the book they’d had to read for today, but Sal hasn’t done the work. He usually is really good about his English work, since it’s his favorite subject, but his mind has been somewhere else lately.

 

(He knows _exactly_ where his mind has been, but, well, every time his thoughts wander there, he shuts them out.)

 

Ashley’s sitting next to him in the back of the classroom, twiddling her thumbs through the holes she’d cut into the sleeves of her sweater. Even though Sal had been blushing and stammering about her a while back, now he’s actually pretty glad that they’re just friends. She’s so cool, and if they’d ruined any chance of actual friendship with some weird freshman relationship, Sal would’ve been disappointed.

 

She seems to know that he’s drifting off without even paying much attention to him at all. He likes that, the fact that she knows how her friends tick. He wishes that he could be that friend. “Late night last night?” she asks.

 

“Mm,” he says, because he’s not really sure how to answer it. “Couldn’t sleep.” Thankfully, one of the cooler parts of having a mask is that teachers can’t see when his mouth is moving, so he rarely gets in trouble for talking. Especially when he sits in the back.

 

“Why not?” Ashley whispers. “I usually can’t sleep when it’s too-“

 

Unfortunately, Ashley doesn’t have the same mouth-hiding mask that he does.

 

“Care to share with the class, Miss Ashley?” the teacher asks. Every student in the class simultaneously looks at her, because subtlety is lost on each and every one of them. Chug, in the front, nearly falls out of his chair.

 

“I was answering a question that Sal had about the book,” she lies, smoothly as ever. _A good person to have when we get into trouble,_ Sal thinks, but he’s not really thinking about classroom antics as much as demons and rituals.

 

“Oh? And which question would that be?” It’s directed at Sal, this time.

 

_Shit._ Sal hasn’t read the book since chapter one. “I was wondering what she thought about Lilly’s mother,” he lies. “I mean, for all we know, she might not even be dead, right? Tee Ray doesn’t seem all that trustworthy.” He prays to whatever godly figure that something in the recent readings hasn’t disputed anything that he’s said.

 

“Nice deduction, Sal,” the teacher says, and moves on to the next person. _Cool._

 

“Hey, genius,” Ashley whispers. “That movie _Clueless_ is gonna be at the sketchy theater that plays movies that aren’t playing anymore. We should all go. You can meet Mel properly.”

 

Mel. The girlfriend. Right. “Sure,” Sal says. All of a sudden, he wants to ask Ashley everything. How’d she know she liked girls? How’d she know that Mel liked her? What should he do if he’s not as straight as he’d previously thought he was?

 

_Don’t think about it,_ Sal thinks, and, with his ears tinted red, _don’t think about him, either._

 

He doesn’t suppose that it would be a bad thing, liking boys. But it’s not something he’s ever even considered before, and the thought of him not knowing himself as well as he had previously thought is a little scary. He’ll need to think about it more before he tells anyone.

 

Ashley gives him a thumbs up and goes back to sketching in her notebook.

 

-

 

The hallways are always one of the most annoying parts of Sal’s day. There are too many people in a too-small space, and everyone’s always bumping into him and yelling at him for _daring_ to not jump out of their way. Jerks.

 

His locker’s near the end of the freshman hallway, which luckily means that there’s enough empty lockers near him to cancel out some possible people existing in his presence. Sal spins out the code for his padlock, since he’d had to get one after someone had shoved horse manure in his locker to “prank the weird kid.” Before he can grab his biology binder, a note falls out from the top shelf.

 

He knows who it’s from before he even looks at it. Forgetting about his binder already, he grabs the folded-up piece of paper and opens it up as greedily as a kid on Christmas.

 

_Todd said that freshies just watch a movie during Bio. Come hang out with me - art room._

 

Sal snorts. It’s just like Larry to say _freshies_ as if he hadn’t just been a freshman the previous year. What a dork. But if they _are_ just watching a movie, then maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to skip…

 

_Be responsible,_ a voice says in one corner of his mind. _Skipping class isn’t smart, and the less time you spend with Larry, the quicker you’ll get over him._

 

_But Larry,_ the other part of his brain says, and it’s a valid point.

 

Fuck it.

 

The art room’s in the back of the senior wing, where most of the other elective rooms are. Larry takes a lot of electives, especially art ones, since they’re his favorite classes to take. It's cool, that Larry's found something that makes him happy.

 

Sal sneaks past his biology classroom, which thankfully has the lights off and the door shut already, so hopefully nobody’s looking at him. Worried that he’ll run into someone from his class, he goes down the steps two at a time and picks at the loose threads of his jeans on the way to the art room.

 

The art teacher, thankfully, loves Larry enough to let him bring Sal in whenever he wants. They eat lunch in here, too, away from everyone else who would trip Sal or try and start something with Larry. (Though, to be fair, when they start shit with Larry, they’re more likely to have Sal punch them than who they intended.)

 

Larry’s already there, gluing something to a piece of paper at one of the tables. He looks up and grins, crooked teeth all showing. Ugh. It’s so cute. “Bro!” he says. “Come look at my project.”

 

So Sal wanders over, waving at the teacher and sliding into the stool next to Larry. The project seems to be a collage with a bunch of magazine cut-outs. There’s a makeshift Sanity’s Fall logo that Larry made by cutting out the _S_ and the _F_ of two different headlines, a photograph of a tree, and -

 

Larry’s currently coloring in what must have been a picture of a woman with pigtails, except now everything has been cut except for the hair. He’s coloring it with a blue marker. “Hey,” Sal says, surprised, “hey, that’s me!”

 

“That’s you, dude!” Larry agrees. “We all had to draw a word out of a hat and make a collage based off of it.”

 

“Cool,” Sal says, flipping through one of the magazines to see if he can find anything interesting. “What was your word?”

 

“Important.”

 

“…Oh,” Sal says, because words are suddenly failing him. “And I’m there?”

 

“Duh,” Larry answers, rolling his eyes, as if he hadn't just altered Sal's entire universe. “You’re like, the most important person in my life, man. Who else do you think I talk to?”

 

Sal’s eye must have gotten a little dust in it or something, but he manages to blink it out before any tears can fall. “Cool,” he says. “Hey, if I find a cat, can it represent Gizmo?”

 

“Dude! Great idea!”

 

-

 

When Sal gets back to the apartment, he can hear his dad typing away in his bedroom. He calls out an  _I’m home, Dad!_ and then goes to ransack the fridge. He usually brings food to school just in case one of his friends needs something, but never actually _eats_ there. Not when there’s nowhere to take his mask off privately.

 

There’s nothing interesting in the fridge. Condiments, coffee creamer, and cheese, but nothing that he can really use to make anything good. _Ugh._ He hasn’t eaten since eight this morning…

 

Though when he turns around, he notices a sandwich on the counter. Ooh, is that a fluffernutter? _Nice._

 

“Dad, is this sandwich for you?” Sal calls into the other room.

 

“What?” is the distracted response.

 

“This sandwich. On the counter. Can I eat it?”

 

“Uh, I never made one, so, sure?”

 

… Huh. His dad probably had made it and then forgotten about it. Sal suspects that his dad is distracted all the time now, plagued with thoughts about …

 

Ahem. Anyway, there’s a sandwich here that should have been in Sal’s mouth, like, four minutes ago. He reaches up to the back of his head to slightly loosen one of the prosthetic straps. He doesn’t like taking his mask all the way off, not even when it’s just him. It’s not just to keep the sight of his face hidden, which everyone seems to think. The prosthetic keeps the wounds that never really healed clean and away from anything harmful, and he hates risking it.

 

… It’s a pretty good sandwich.

 

-

 

Todd knocks on the apartment door at five in the evening. Sal’s working on some homework on the couch, Gizmo purring contentedly in his lap. “It’s open,” Sal calls, not wanting to get up and disturb his cat.

 

Todd beams at him. They’ve never really been _too_ close, never the type to talk about feelings or whatever, but they always have a fun time together. Todd makes a _great_ DnD game master. “Mel’s gonna be here at five-thirty, since she’s the only one out of us who can drive.”

 

Sal frowns, since he knows that, just from seeing her car around school, Mel has had her license for almost a year now. Would that make her a junior? Maybe even a senior? They share a class, so maybe she doesn’t have the best grades… There’s a rule against teenagers driving more than one non-family passenger, but apparently they’re not going to live by that law today.

 

Todd keeps talking. “She’s real cool. She brought her mom’s truck so that we can all camp out in the backseat. It’ll be fun.”

 

“Who else is coming?”

 

“Us, Larry, Ashley, Mel. We asked Chug if he wanted to come, but he had a piano recital.”

 

“Cool, cool, cool,” Sal says, and wonders how much money he should bring. Sometimes when he goes to the movies with his friends, they buy snacks before to avoid the ridiculous pricing. Would they do that this time? What snack should he get? He has a sudden craving for cookies, the homemade kind with chocolate chunks. He hasn’t made cookies from scratch in a while, but maybe if Dad gives him a twenty he could pick up the ingredients.

 

_Blonde hair covered in flour. “Sal, sweetie, will you grab me the measuring cups?”_

 

His psychiatrist had once said that the best way to stop associating certain things with his mom, or the accident, was to make new memories with them. It doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does. Sometimes when he hears the name _Diane_ he thinks of the senior who punched a boy in the face for calling her best friend a bitch, but other times he thinks of how his dad used to say his mom’s name whenever they got in arguments. _Diane. Diane._

 

“Er… you’re drifting, buddy,” Todd says, and Sal snaps out of it. God, how had his mind even gone down that road in the first place?

 

“Sorry,” he says. “Wanna hang out until they get here?”

 

“Sure,” Todd replies, and Sal always likes someone who can pretend that everything’s okay.

 

-

 

Sal actually really likes Ashley’s girlfriend. He almost doesn’t want to, at first, but in the end, he doesn’t even feel jealous. Her pink hair is tied back in an elaborate braid that must have taken hours, and she’s in all black. He’s a little intimidated, for a moment, but she tells him that he has a cool mask and ugly-laughs at all of Ashley’s bad jokes.

 

“You guys are gonna have to tell me where to head, because I’ve never been to this theater before,” she says from the front seat. Ashley’s in the passenger’s seat, and the rest of them are squashed into the back.

 

Sal’s in the middle, thigh-to-thigh with both Todd and Larry. _You’ve been this close to him a hundred times before,_ he tells himself, but he can’t stop thinking about the fact that Larry’s arm is behind him in an attempt to get more room.

 

“To be fair, nobody really _wants_ to go here,” Ashley says. “It’s the _oh, shit, I didn’t see this movie when it was playing_ theater.”

 

“Fair enough,” Mel agrees. “Do I take a left here?”

 

“According to my directions-“ Todd begins to say, but Sal doesn’t listen to the rest. Larry's leaning towards him, arm moving from the top of the seat to Sal's shoulders, and it's infinitely more important.

 

“You good?” his best friend asks, voice low enough that the only way the others would understand him is if they read his lips. But they’re all paying attention to Todd, anyway.

 

“Yeah, I’m good,” Sal agrees, gentle. He wonders what had prompted the question. Was he that obvious?

 

“Good,” Larry says, eyes darting from Sal to the people around them. “Because I actually was going to ask you-“

 

“Right here!” Ashley says. “Don’t miss it!”

 

“I won’t!” Mel mutters, and _flings_ through the left turn so hard that Sal presses right into Todd.

 

“Hi, Todd,” Sal says, right arm reaching to the roof so that he can sturdy himself.

 

“Err…” Todd responds.

 

“Good talk.”

 

Whatever Larry was going to ask, he apparently isn’t going to anymore. The topic has changed to the movie and Sal is really, really dizzy.

 

-

 

There’s only a few other people in the cinema, and they’re all up towards the front. Sal and his friends slink towards the back with their snacks, not wanting to be too close.

 

He ends up between Larry and Ashley, who are both preoccupied in conversations with the people next to him. Though he knows that he could enter the conversations without being nosy, he doesn’t. He just stares at the screen and wills that this unpleasant feeling in his chest will go away.

 

The movie itself is … okay. The main character is funny and pretty, though Sal can’t really focus on much of that. The love story is kind of weird, considering that they’re, like, _siblings,_ and everything is confusing. Paul Rudd looks like an ant.

 

He pays attention to the character Christian, though. It’s not really that _bad_ when he tells Cher that he’s gay … She’s a little disappointed, which is uncomfortable, but other than that, it seems okay?

 

Maybe?

 

Ashley and Mel chat the whole way out of the theater about how they wanted one of the characters to be a lesbian, with Todd making comments about _well, statistically, films usually don’t have more than …_

 

They’d be okay with it, if Sal told them that he likes boys as well as girls. He knows that. But he’s not sure if _he’s_ all that okay with it yet.

 

“Let’s go to the diner down Main Street,” Mel says. “I’m not feeling much food, but I want fries.”

 

“ _Fries,”_ Sal says, because, God, pining has made him hungry, and just like that, they’re off.

 

-

 

Sal gets back to his apartment when it’s almost nine, having spent a good hour with his friends after the movie. He’d had fun! Hopefully they can have fun outings like that more often.

 

There’s a note on the counter in his father’s handwriting. _Went to bed. Leftovers are in the fridge if you’re hungry. :)_

 

Sal isn’t, not when he’s full of popcorn and fries, but he appreciates the effort anyway. All he really wants to do is go to sleep, so he shuts off the lights, makes sure Gizmo is okay, and heads to his bedroom.

 

When he lays down in bed, he only gets a few seconds to try and fall asleep before his walkie talkie on his nightstand starts making static noises. (He’d gotten him and Larry new ones after the whole sorry-I-deconstructed-your-belongings-without-permission incident.) “Sal?”

 

Sal reaches behind him and thumps around blindly for his walkie, finding it after nearly sending it crashing to the floor. “Hey, Lar,” he answers after finding the right buttons, rolling over to his back so that he can press the walkie talkie against his chest.

 

“You okay?” Larry asks. “You seemed a little off today.”

 

_Shit._ It had been noticeable. “Uh…” Sal says. “Yeah, I’m good. Was kind of in another world today.”

 

“That happens,” Larry replies, gentle. His voice is a little crackly due to the connection, but the softness in his voice from assumably trying not to wake his mom up is making Sal heat up. “Wanna talk about it?”

 

There’s no way to tell your best friend that you have a crush on them. It’s just not how anything works. His most important relationship is _not_ going to be ruined by a stupid crush. “Not really,” Sal admits, and then, in a desperate attempt to change the subject, “hey, what were you going to say today? Before Mel gave us all whiplash?”

 

Sal doesn’t know what he’s hoping for.

 

“Oh!” Larry exclaims, a bit too loudly. “Oops. Sorry if that woke you up, Mom.” There’s a silence while they both wait to see if Lisa will make Larry get off of the walkie, but she never comes. “Er, I was gonna ask if you were okay hanging around with Ashley’s girlfriend. You know, considering you confessed to her, like, a few days ago?”

 

_Oh._ It’s like a punch in the gut, but he doesn’t know why it hurts. Sal groans, the hand that isn’t pressing the button on his walkie cradling his mask. “Don’t remind me,” he says. “As sure as I am that my fleeting crush on Ashley will be something that we’ll laugh about a year from now, it’s still humiliating.”

 

Larry laughs through the walkie, something barely above an intake of breath. Sal can almost imagine him, lying in bed just like Sal is, hair spreading out on the sheets. “Do you, uh, still like her?”

 

Sal hesitates. “No,” he says, and it’s not a lie.

 

He doesn’t add the fact that he likes somebody else. He figures that it will just tangle up more drama and lies than he needs.

 

(His Gear Boy lights up in his sleep. He doesn’t wake up in time to see it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> take a shot every time sal says/thinks 'cool'


	3. teenagers (scare the living shit out of me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He tells both of them, warmly, to have a safe trip home. He loves his friends so much, even though it seems kind of cheesy to think about. They’re all so cool, so nice, and so accepting of him. He hadn’t had that many friends back in New Jersey.
> 
> It seems that almost every night since he’s moved here, he’s fallen asleep happy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey hey hey1!!!!! might not upload till after the 21st due to wacky wifi connection/busy sched. (which, btw, is my birthday!!!!!!!!!)
> 
> sal is happy at the beginning. 
> 
> trigger warnings: guns, profanity, anxiety attack, mentioned/implied alcoholism (I might be forgetting something so lmk!!!

“The orc shouts, surprised by your presence,” Todd says. They’re leaning over a D&D board, all holding sets of dice in their hands. Todd, Chug, Ashley and Sal try and fit in a D&D session every week. Sometimes, Mel and Larry tag along, but they both think they're 'too cool' for some good old tabletop games. It's actually a little bit better without them, if Sal's being honest with himself, because both of them just try to kill every character, object, or concept that they come across. It ruins immersion! They’re in Sal’s apartment, since his dad isn’t home to tell them to be quiet. Todd continues. “He does not seem very happy to see you.”

 

“I can speak Orcish,” Sal says, “so I ask him if he’s having a good day.”

 

Chug chokes on his laughter. “He wants to kill you!” he says in-character.

 

“It’s alright, I am a charismatic guy,” Sal says. It’s a lie. He has the least charisma out of every single player here. “Should I roll a diplomacy check?”

 

“As they’re doing this, I want to take out my greataxe and throw it at the guy they’re talking to’s head,” Ashley says, quite pleased with herself. Sally and Chug both gasp in mock-horror. Todd just looks resigned. This has happened many times before.

 

“Zinasaadi, _no,_ ” Chug cries, at the same time that Todd tells her to roll for it.

 

“Zinasaadi, _yes,_ ” Ashley says, and rolls the dice.

 

Todd looks down. “It’s enough,” he says, only slightly sounding like he hates his life. “Roll for damage.”

 

She takes the four-sided die and rolls. It’s a four out of four. “I love everything,” she tells them.

 

“The greataxe hits him right in between his eyes,” Todd says. “Your throw was so epic that his head explodes on the impact.”

 

Ashley cheers and Sal mourns for the diplomacy that could have occurred. The session lasts another hour or so before they all say that it’s getting late. Ashley doesn’t even live in the apartment complex, so she’ll be needing to get home soon.

 

He tells both of them, warmly, to have a safe trip home. He loves his friends so much, even though it seems kind of cheesy to think about. They’re all so cool, so nice, and so accepting of him. He hadn’t had that many friends back in New Jersey.

 

It seems that almost every night since he’s moved here, he’s fallen asleep happy.

 

-

 

When he wakes up, the first thing he sees, (or rather, feels,) is Gizmo kneading his legs. “Hey, buddy,” Sal says, voice a little raspy, reaching his hand out. Gizmo bumps his head against it and starts to purr.

 

“I love you,” Sal tells his cat, because what if Gizmo doesn’t know? What if Gizmo gets possessed by some demon tomorrow and he’ll never get to tell his cat that he loves him?

 

… Man, his mind goes to weird places sometimes. He looks over at his alarm clock to see that it’s a little more than fifteen minutes before it’s supposed to go off. He flops his head back down onto the pillow and groans. The winter air is still so cold, making getting out from underneath his blankets seem almost impossible. Especially when Gizmo’s on top of him. Isn’t moving an animal off of you a sin or something?

 

He does manage to get up after contemplating the pros and cons of skipping school today. It’s only then that he notices the outfit laid out for him neatly on his chair. It’s a little bit nicer than what he usually wears, since his jeans usually have holes in them, but it’ll do.

 

Who had put them there? Had his dad come into his room while he was sleeping? Maybe they’d been there last night and he’d just been too tired after D&D to notice. _Hah,_ his memory has been totally bugging out on him lately! It’d be a little scary if he hadn’t been through much worse.

 

He changes into the clothes that had been laid out for him, even though they’re a bit more clean-cut than he would like. The only person who would even notice is Larry, who might tease him about why he doesn’t look like he just rolled around in a ditch. Sal can imagine it now, every single tic in Larry’s voice. He’s got him memorized. In response, he’d say, _yeah, at least I don’t have raccoon eyes._

 

Larry looks good in eyeliner. Sal will never, ever admit it.

 

-

 

_Quick write: Spend three minutes writing about something you feel deeply about._

 

Shit. Sally can’t _write_! Does anybody know how hard writing is? At least his teacher doesn’t actually read these, and they all just go into his journal.

 

Ugh. He has less than three minutes, and he doesn’t even know what to write about. He feels pretty strongly about … well, not much. He likes to think that he’s a pretty chill guy!

 

He glances up at the timer on the teacher’s desk to realize that he’s been effectively worrying and trying to think of an idea for two minutes and fifty seconds. Welp. Time flies when you’re having fun, right? (That’s sarcasm, because Sal is having the opposite of a good time.)

 

Sal doesn’t feel right just leaving the whole page blank of everything except for the title of the prompt, so with about five seconds left to go, he scribbles down the one word that comes to mind.

 

_Larry._

 

It doesn’t mean anything. They’re just best friends.

 

… There’s a high probability that Sal is lying to himself.

 

-

 

Sal wakes up to the feeling of hands on his body, shaking him. “What’s - Larry, I swear,” he says, but when he grudgingly opens his eyes, he sees nobody. His bedroom door is cracked open even though it had been locked before, but there’s nobody here.

 

What. The. Fuck.

 

He shoots up to a sitting position, reaching blindly for his mask while trying to get his eye to adjust to the darkness. His alarm clock says it’s two past two in the morning. Ugh. It’s too early for whatever this is. Is there a ghost in his apartment? Though there are ghosts in nearly every corner of the building, he’s never seen one in his own apartment before. He doesn’t _want_ to see one in his own apartment. Dammit, where’s his Gear Boy?

 

He feels the small pressure of something weighing down on his hand. He nearly jerks it back until he looks down at it, instantly stilling. Barely visible, he can see the outline of fingers resting on the back of his hand. The nails are sharp and too long to be real, but he can’t tell if the hand is more masculine or feminine. Even if the hand _was_ one way or the other, he wouldn’t have a sure way of telling, anyway. If he looks closer, he can see the faintest whisper of the rest of the hand grabbing him, but everything disappears once it gets to the forearm. And yet, he can feel the presence of someone else, as if there’s a human standing right in front of him.

 

He feels rather than sees the fingers grip a little tighter, not hurting him in the slightest but now it’s like they’re holding on to him as opposed to just resting their hand on his. There’s a little tug, and, hey, maybe Sal could’ve figured this out a good minute or two ago, but he has the impression that they’re trying to get him to follow them. So he rises to his feet, almost stumbles over them, and takes a step towards his bedroom door.

 

Sal opens his mouth to talk, to say _who are you?_ but then he sees the person through the crack of his door. And then he sees the gun. He only sees a glimpse of them, just for a moment, but it’s enough.

 

Holy shit. Are they being robbed?

 

He inches forward until his mask is nearly touching the open door. Now that he’s closer, he can see better. There are two of them. One towards the front entrance, and one currently rummaging through the kitchen drawers. Fuck. Fuck? Fuck.

 

Out of all the apartments, they’d picked the one with him in it. God. Maybe Larry’s not the one who’s cursed.

 

“What do I do,” he says, voice not even audible to himself, even though his lips form the words. The house phone’s in the kitchen, so dialing 911 is out of the question. Does he just, like, pretend it’s not happening and go to bed? Does he hide? There doesn’t seem to be much that he _can_ do.

 

His walkie talkie beeps as if it’s being pressed. _Of course._ Larry. Oh God, please let Larry be awake. Please.

 

He can question whether or not having a ghost in his house is terrifying later, because right now his mind is just going, _gun, gun, gun._ Sal scrambles back towards the walkie talkie and grabs it, presses it down. “Larry,” he hisses. “Larry, please be awake, Larry, Larry, Larry.”

 

No response.

 

“Larry, I need you to wake up. I won’t shut up until you wake up. Larry, c’mon, Larry-“

 

No response. Tears of frustration are building in Sal’s eye. “ _Larry,_ ” he begs one last time, and then gives up. He goes to put the walkie back on the table-

 

“Sal?” comes crackling back, from a Larry who has quite obviously just woken up. “Are you okay?”

 

“Oh my God, Larry,” Sal says, both relieved and, at the same time, feeling no better at all. “I need you to call the police.”

 

“What?” Larry says, seeming awake now.

 

“Just _do_ it,” Sal says. “Tell them to come to my apartment. There are people with _guns._ Whatever you do, Larry, do not come up here. _”_

 

“Sal-“ Larry says, but he’s not whispering, and it’s too loud, and-

 

Sal’s door opens. “Aw, shit,” the person who opened it says, and then their gun is pointed at him.

 

Sal’s been through a lot, you know? He’s had a dog ravage his face. He’s had his mother die. He’s met, like, at least ten ghosts. He’s never had a gun pointed straight between his eyes before, though, and it’s pretty terrifying.

 

“Drop the walkie,” the person says, covered with a mask so that Sal can’t see. “ _Drop it._ ”

 

“I’m dropping it,” Sal says, because he never learned to shut his fucking mouth, because Larry likes to call him Sassy Face instead of Sally Face, and he drops the walkie. The battery falls out of the device when it hits the ground, and Sally can hear a _don’t_ before it goes out.

 

Don’t _what_? Die?

 

The other person, who Sal had only seen for a brief moment, is now behind them. “ _Dude,_ ” they say. “ _What the fuck_?”

 

“Why are you _what the fuck_ ing me,” the first person says. “I saw the girl, I put a gun to her head.”

 

“He,” Sal corrects. He usually doesn’t like to, but he’s kind of about to freak out, and if talking is what stops him from doing that, well, who cares?

 

“Sorry, dude,” is the response. “I put a gun to _his_ head.”

 

“Who gives a fuck, Alex?” the second one says. “ _Why?”_

 

“He was calling the cops,” the person who is apparently Alex says. “And fuck you for using my name, because now he’ll have something to tell them! I gotta shoot!”

 

Welp.

 

“No, you don’t,” Sal says. “I wasn’t even calling the cops. You can’t walkie talkie the cops.”

 

“I gotta shoot,” Alex says again. “Family motto, assholes, don’t stop till you’ve got what you want.”

 

“I don’t think he was talking to the cops,” not-Alex says. “You can’t walkie the cops.”

 

 _Hey,_ Sal thinks. _That’s what I just said._

 

“We can’t risk it,” Alex says. “If we get arrested together, my-“

 

“We don’t have to get arrested at _all_ if we leave right now! We already hit up half of the apartments in this place-“

 

“I’ll have to go back to that program-“

 

“Ain’t nobody _fixing you-_ “

 

They’re both talking over each other, arguing about something Sal’s pretty sure he’s not supposed to be hearing, but hey, arguing isn’t shooting, right?

 

“You’re new at this, huh?” Sal says. _Why are you goading the people who are trying to shoot you, Fisher?_

 

“ _Shut your fucking mouth_!” and, okay, that finger has moved to the trigger, and -

 

“Dude,” Sal says. “I have a few things I gotta do before I die, you know? I turn sixteen in, like, two months. I have something I gotta confess to someone.”

 

“ _Fifteen,_ ” they both say, and neither of them seem like they want to be here right now.

 

Sal takes a breath. _Bye, Dad,_ he thinks. “Yeah,” he says. “Don’t you think fifteen’s too young to be-“

 

He hears his apartment door fling open wider than it already had been, hears the numerous footsteps that thump heavily on the ground. “This is the police! Put your guns down!”

 

Oh, thank God.

 

-

 

The police take Sal’s statement, take photos of the apartment, and leave. They say that they don’t think that the duo actually took anything, but that they also will have to find out which other apartments in the building were broken into.

 

Sal only realizes that his dad isn’t in the apartment when he peeks in to see why he hasn’t woken up yet. The bed is unmade but empty, and his dad is just … gone. No note.

 

He doesn’t stay gone long. Henry Fisher comes back about thirty minutes after the police have arrived, since the only reason they’re still camping out is to find out why this poor fifteen-year-old has been left to his own devices.

 

He smells like whiskey. One of the policewomen writes down a number. “In case you need it,” she says. “For kids with parents like yours.”

 

Sal isn’t sure what that means. He wasn’t even sure that he had a _parent like his_ until five seconds ago. Thankfully, the policewoman must know that there isn’t really much that she can do, so she doesn’t pry.

 

But Sal can’t be around his father, so the second that the police leave, he’s right behind them, slamming the basement button on the elevator as many times as he can. He doesn’t know when he started panicking, started feeling everything build on top of each other until his emotions became one big swirling mess of misery.

 

When the elevator door opens, he stumbles into a man’s chest in an effort to exit. “I-“ he says, choking the word out, but when he looks up, it’s Larry.

 

“I couldn’t wait down here anymore,” he says. “Not when you-“

 

“Yeah,” Sal says, and he couldn’t tell who reached out to who, but in a blink his face was buried into Larry’s shoulder. Long arms were holding him close, one wrapping around his back and one tangled into Sal’s hair. They’re embracing in the middle of the hall, holding each other closer than Sal has ever seen anyone hold their best friend.

 

“You’re okay,” Larry says, in a voice that makes Sal unsure of whose benefit it’s being said for. “You’re alive.”

 

“Yeah,” Sal says, and takes a breath. Here, when he’s being held by his favorite person in the universe, he doesn’t feel like crying anymore. His hands are still shaking, but he’s okay. Or, at least, he will be.

 

“Tell me everything,” Larry says, pulling apart slightly so that even though they’re still gripping each other, they can look eye-to-eye. It’s almost like they’re slow dancing, except they’re not actually moving. Sal’s not entirely sure where to start, but he tries.He talks about the fact that there’s a ghost in his apartment, but that it seems to be a nice ghost. He talks about the burglars, the gun, the way he couldn’t shut up. Finally, he talks about how his dad wasn’t there, had left him alone, might have done that a thousand times without Sal noticing.

 

“And the police just left? Wouldn’t they deem you unfit to live with him or some shit?”

 

“I don’t know,” Sal says. “I’m not sure that would have been enough proof or whatever.” Not that he’d wanted them to, of course. That’s the last thing Sal wants - he’d rather be torn apart by a gorilla than not live with his dad anymore.

 

“Christ,” Larry says, and pulls Sal back in. Sal brings his left arm around the back of Larry’s shoulders, his right hand going around the other way to touch the back of his best friend’s neck.

 

“I can’t go back up,” Sal whispers. That would mean talking to his dad, and then his dad will ask him what happened, and he’ll have to tell the story again.

 

“It’s chill,” Larry says. “How about I make you some tea, huh?”

 

“…Yeah,” Sal agrees. “Tea sounds real good.”

 

-

 

(The burglars get put in a holding cell and, a few hours later, are found ripped apart by an unknown assailant. The only evidence is a chipped fake nail lying on the floor, bright blue.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i could write an entire 10k oneshot just abt todd's campaign
> 
> you: sophie why do you have so many run-on sentences  
> me, an intellectual: the descriptions are all coming from sal's head and if he panics the sentences get longer and less articulate


	4. reputation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It was scary, but I'm fine now," Sal says. It's pretty much true! If Sal can brush off demons, ghosts, and all that stuff, he can brush off a gun, too. 
> 
> She's either too old or too oblivious to doubt him. Sal's not sure if she's wrong to do so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive been putting off writing this for like 2 weeks but for some reason being pissed tf off really. really helped.

Larry drafts a note that reads _EMERGENCY MEETING IN LARRY'S ROOM. LIVES ARE AT STAKE_ and pays Chug a dollar fifty to slip it under Todd's door. The redhead in question comes down, looking confused, to see Sal in a heap of blankets on his best friend's bed and Larry himself eating potato chips on the floor.

 

Todd pushes his glasses up, looking like a nerd from one of those teen movies that Sal can never force himself to watch. There's always at least one cringeworthy scene that puts guys like him down. (Not that he's entirely sure what type of guy that would be.) "What seems to be the problem?" he asks.

 

"I'm being haunted by Casper the Friendly Ghost," Sal says, a bit lazily. He's not entirely sure how dangerous this situation is, though Larry seems to be convinced that Sal is a day and a half from meeting a ghostly fate, no pun intended.

 

"You're ... being  _haunted?_ More than usual?" There are dozens of ghosts in Addison Apartments, after all. 

 

"More than usual," Sal agrees. "It's in my apartment. Some shit keeps happening that nobody else would have done, like, hands on me and shit, so... ghost."

 

"Ghost," Todd agrees.

 

" _Ghost,_ " Larry grumbles. "How do we get rid of it?"

 

"Well, we don't know if it's dangerous or not, right?" Todd asks. "When you say hands 'on you', what do you mean?"

 

"I got shaken awake when the burglary happened," Sal says, reaching over to steal a chip from Larry. "So like, good ghost? Telling me I was being robbed?"

 

" _Bad ghost_ made you get a gun to your head," Larry points out, which, well, is true, but, well, Sal kind of has a good feeling about her, whoever she is! Maybe Larry's just worried. But even thinking _Larry_ and _worried_ in the same sentence is kind of difficult, because Larry's one of the most laidback people Sal's ever met. Rivaling maybe Ashley, of course.

 

"Well, regardless, we'll need to find a way to decipher it from other ghosts in case someone other than you runs into it. Can you name any attributes that stick out to you?"

 

Sal hums, feeling like he's being interrogated. "Well, the hands didn't look all that masculine. They were wearing fake nails."

 

"Fake nails," Todd says, and scrunches up his face. He looks slightly constipated, so Sal stifles a giggle. "I swear I heard something on the news this morning about fake nails. Oh, well, it probably has no significance."

 

"So how do we get rid of it?" Larry asks. "Sure, it might be all nice, but it's in Sal's _bedroom,_ dude! What if something creepy happens?"

 

"We'll just have to ride it out," Todd says, with a smile that looks a little more like a grimace, and oh, those are famous last words.

 

-

 

Sal walks by Mr. Addison's apartment on his way to visit Miss Rosenberg, who had wanted to check up on him after the break-in. Mr. Addison is so rarely the one who initiates conversations that when he hears the click of the slot opening, Sal jumps half of a foot. Had Mr. Addison just been waiting on the other end of the door, waiting for somebody to walk by?

 

"Sal," he says, uncomfortably formal. "Sal, would you bring this cup of tea to Miss Rosenberg? Save her the trouble?"

 

"Oh, yeah, sure," Sal says, taking a few steps back. It's not that he doesn't like Mr. Addison, per se, and Sal can completely understand wanting privacy, but he's probably the person that Sal knows the least in the apartment complex. Hell, Sal knows some of the ghosts in this building better than he knows Mr. Addison. They've never really left that 'politely awkward' stage of communication.

 

And it seems that they never will, because right after Mr. Addison gives him the tea, he looks at Sal's outfit in what seems to be disgust. "Did you buy your jeans with those holes in them?"

 

"Did you buy this apartment building with holes in it?"

 

Mr. Addison stares at him, and then closes the slot. Sal takes that as the end of the conversation and continues on to Miss Rosenberg's apartment.

 

"Oh, sweetheart!" she says, the second that he walks in the door. "I've been so worried about you!"

 

"It's alright, Miss Rosenberg," Sal says, smiling even though she can't see it. (Not that she'd want to see his smile, since it's full of missing teeth and no lips.) "I'm fine, see!"

 

"The second I heard that something happened in the apartment, I just knew it affected you. I just knew. I was asking everybody who came to visit me if they knew whether or not the girl in 402 was okay."

 

It's weird, visiting Miss Rosenberg, especially since every other day there are neighbors whispering in the halls about how she had a "close call" last night. But she's always been nice to Sal, even though she doesn't know that he's a boy, so he gives her the cup of tea and answers all of her questions.

 

Forgive him for even thinking it, but Sal doesn't want her to die. He's tired of having people die, and he's tired of ghosts. God, he's so tired of ghosts, no matter how cool they are. He likes his privacy, dude! With ghosts, there isn't really such thing as privacy anymore. They could always be  _there._

 

"It was scary, but I'm fine now," Sal says. It's pretty much true! If Sal can brush off demons, ghosts, and all that stuff, he can brush off a gun, too. 

 

She's either too old or too oblivious to doubt him. Sal's not sure if she's wrong to do so.

 

-

 

Sal likes watching Larry paint. It's pretty cool, watching him concentrate on something like this. As Larry paints the brown of the bark on a tree, Sal finds himself mesmerized by each flick of the wrist. It's so relaxing that Sal can almost feel himself falling asleep.

 

Their lives have been pretty crazy lately. Not even counting all this haunting shit, there's enough stuff going on, like with Larry's dad. It's nice to have quiet moments like this, where they can just take a minute to breathe.

 

Larry pauses, turns around to see Sal curled up on the bed and the book he'd been reading for English discarded next to him. "Are you falling asleep on my bed?" Larry asks.

 

"Do you mind?" Sal responds.

 

Larry takes a breath, a little inhale that's too quick to be calm. Sal doesn't really know why, so he just assumes that maybe he forgets to breathe while being concentrated on painting. Or something. Is that something that artists do? Sal's never drawn anything in his life.

 

"Yeah," Larry says, barely audible. The next time he speaks, he sounds more like himself. "Yeah, dude, that's alright. You're probably tired as shit, with all this ghost stuff happening. It seems like you're at the middle of it."

 

"Oh?" Sal says. "It's not really me. It's the building."

 

"True," Larry agrees. "But Todd didn't really ghost hunt before you came. And I didn't even think they existed until you showed me."

 

Sal hums and then falls asleep.

 

-

 

Ashley hits him with a paper airplane in the middle of English. He glares at her, and even though his eyes are barely visible, he likes to think that she can feel it. "Read it," she mouths, so he begrudgingly grabs the thing to do so.

 

 _Todd says you're being haunted?_ followed by a small picture of a cartoon ghost. It's kind of cute. Ashley's a good artist.

 

 _Yeah,_ he writes back.  _I know you're not a big believer but it's fucking weird._ Instead of folding it back into an airplane, he passes it back to a blond boy with braces, who passes it to Ashley.

 

_Mel has a conspiracy theory about it. Can she and I hang out w/ you and Todd tonight? Get the deets?_

 

What's the harm?

 

-

 

Mel shows up with coffees for everybody and a blush on her cheeks. From the way Ashley follows her, Sal can only assume that there had been some corny love confession a few minutes prior. "I  _have a theory,_ " she bellows into Sal's bedroom. Gizmo is stretched out onto Larry's lap from where he sits on the floor and is receiving fantastic belly scratches. Sal has never seen Gizmo like  _anybody,_ including himself, the way that Gizmo loves Larry. It's almost like the stupid cat  _knows-_

 

"Tell us," Sal says, eager. "Did you get salted caramel?"

 

"Just for you, pumpkin," she responds in a faux sultry accent, giving him his drink and dispending the others to their friends. Sal responds with a cheesy _thanks, darlin'_ while Ashley calls them both dorks. Sal notices that Larry looks happy with his coffee. Larry also looks like he's flustered, but Sal's too nice of a guy to ask him why in front of everybody.

 

Mel slumps down on Sal's bed, pulling Ashley down to sit next to her. "Sal, my info has gone from Todd to Ashley to me. Shit gets lost in translation, you feel me? Tell me everything about the ghost."

 

So he tells her, and he even mentions the fact that some stuff has been happening that he can't remember the origins of, like the outfit and the sandwich. "You didn't think that this was  _vital information_?" Todd demands.

 

"I forget things!" Sal defends himself, flinging his hands around everywhere like a loser. "I don't even remember what happened last week, man! It's not out of the ordinary!" As he says it, he realizes that there's something else. There's something else that happened, but he can't remember it. But it doesn't feel like forgetting. It feels like a memory has been taken and stashed away, and he needs it, but it's not there.

 

"Wait, wait, wait, you said fake nails?" Mel demands. "Did you see a color?"

 

Sal drums his fingers on his coffee cup and tries to remember. "No, sorry."

 

"Aw, man," Mel says. "I totally thought that it might have been the thing that killed those two guys."

 

"Killed  _what_ two guys?" Larry asks, and he seems to be having some severe chest pains now that the topic of  _death_ has been brought up.

 

"You know, the burglars?" Mel says, and then elaborates on the blank looks. "The guys who  _put a gun to Sal's head_?"

 

Todd honest-to-God  _screams._ Ashley covers her ears. " _That's what I heard on the news_!"

 

"What?" Sal asks. The guys who put a gun to his head  _died_? And nobody told him? Nobody, in Todd's words, thought that this was  _vital information_?

 

"The fake nail. There was a nail on the floor! They were going to try to DNA test it! Sal, that ghost might not be so friendly after all!"

 

"Shit," Sal says. "Shit! What do we do?"

 

"Look, I don't like this," Ashley says. "I don't even believe in this and it's freaking me out. Can't we exorcise it or something?"

 

The air in the room goes cold, and Sal knows that something's going to happen a millisecond before it does. An old, ugly vase that had been in the corner of his room ever since they moved here flings across the room. The only thing that keeps it from hitting Ashley directly between the eyes is Mel grabbing her and pushing her out of harm's way. The vase in question shatters against his wall at the impact, little shards of clay scattering over his room.

 

There's a brief moment of silence. And then, "Holy shit, dude," Larry says. "That is so uncool. This is so, so uncool."

 

"Are you okay, babe?" Mel asks, quieter than Sal has ever heard her. Ashley doesn't talk, she just nods.

 

Holy shit. There's a murderer of a ghost  _in his bedroom right now._ One that likes to throw fucking vases at his friends.

 

Sal takes a deep breath. "Well, guys," he says, voice lighter than he feels. "You might want to take a second to leave while I clean this up, okay? Wouldn't want you getting cut by glass or anything."

 

Ashley and Mel basically book it out of the room, with Todd following close behind. "I think I'll stay," Larry says, quiet, and helps Sal clean up.

 

Neither of them talk about what just happened, or how to fix it. They're too afraid that she's listening.

 

-

 

"You just wouldn't understand, Sal," his dad says over leftover lasagna. It's all they ever eat anymore - leftovers. Leftover pizza, leftover macaroni and cheese, leftover soup. They don't really have that much money anymore, and his dad doesn't know how to cook anything halfway decent anyway. "It's been rough for me."

 

Sal grits his teeth together, feels the gaps in his mouth. He doesn't want to yell. He loves his dad. He understands. "I know," Sal says. "But that's not enough, you know? I need you, too. You're my dad."

 

His dad laughs, but nothing's funny. "I'm sorry," Henry says, and he sounds like he means it. "I won't leave you alone anymore. That was a mistake. Just know I've had a rough time lately."

 

"I do," Sal says. He doesn't really want to be here. There are so many jokes and deflections somewhere in his throat but it seems so wrong to let any of them out. He wishes he was with Larry or Ashley or all of them, pretending that none of this was happening. 

 

His dad closes his eyes, takes a sip of the diet soda and looks like he's gearing himself up to say something. "Look," he says. "I hope you never have to know what it feels like to lose someone that important. But I did."

 

" _I lost her, too_!" Sal says. Screw this. Screw sympathy. And, standing up, he says, "and at least it wasn't your fault." He sees it in his dad's face. He knows that they both feel that way.

 

"Sal," his dad says, but he's already storming out.

 

-

 

The memory comes back the second he leaves the apartment complex. One minute he's walking and the next he's falling, steadying himself before completely landing on his ass.

 

Holy shit, how had he forgotten? How had he forgotten this?

 

Already realizing that his new realization is so much more important than the general store he was going to walk towards, he sprints around the building and towards the door that leads to Larry's bedroom. He pounds on it with both fists. " _Larry, we're so dumb!_ " he calls down. 

 

Larry's opening the door within a second. He has paint on his shirt, and there's something on the easel behind him that looks blue and white, but it's too early to distinguish what it is. "Why?" Larry asks. "What'd you figure out?"

 

"The stupid triangle ritual," Sal says. "The night we got ice cream. The guy.  _Wynona._ "

 

Larry looks as if he'd completely forgotten about it, too. "Oh, dude," he says. "Oh, man, we gotta tell Todd."

 

Sal grabs Larry by his paint-covered hand and drags him through the other door. "Come on."

 

-

 

Todd blows a raspberry with his lips, rubbing the area between his eyebrows in concentration. "And you both  _forgot_ this? It's not that you thought it was unimportant, you simply didn't remember?"

 

"Yeah," Sal says. "I know that sounds crazy. I could remember sneaking out and coming back but everything in between, I couldn't remember."

 

"And, Larry? You felt the same?"

 

"Uh, yeah?" Larry says. "I mean, I guess. I don't know if I forgot or just didn't think about it."

 

Todd purses his lips. "I would like to think that you two would have been smart enough to put two and two together, had you been able to remember. So, have you considered that maybe this wasn't just simply forgetting?"

 

"What?" Sal asks. "What do you mean? I didn't like, repress it."

 

"You said that you remembered right after you left the apartment building," Todd says. "What if that has significance?"

 

Sal looks over at Larry in a way that hopefully says  _what the hell?_ It seems to translate because Larry's eyebrows are furrowed so tightly together it looks like he only has one. "Explain, please," Sal says.

 

"This ghost threw a vase at Ashley for suggesting to get rid of her. What if this ritual is how to do it? What if it would have been more convenient for the spirit if you had forgotten?"

 

"You think she got in our  _heads_?" Larry says, and that is the voice of Larry when he had seen Megan for the first time. He's scared.

 

"It makes sense," Sal says. "But then why isn't she throwing shit at us right now?"

 

"I'm sorry, Sal," Todd says, "but it seems she only has physical control in your apartment. Meaning you're the one in the most danger."

 

_Well, life was nice while it lasted._

 

**Author's Note:**

> <3


End file.
